Official Divulges Combat Policies

October 14, 2002|By Thom Shanker The New York Times

WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, in a personal set of guidelines for committing forces to combat, wrote that America's leaders must quickly judge when diplomacy has failed, then "act forcefully, early, during the pre-crisis period" to foil an adversary's plans and prevent war.

If those actions fall short, America must be "willing and prepared to act decisively to use the force necessary to prevail, plus some," he wrote.

Rumsfeld's memorandum, written in March 2001 but updated as recently as this weekend, said the nation's leaders must never "dumb down" a mission to gain support from the public, Congress, the United Nations or allies.

In particular, he wrote, leaders must avoid "promising not to do things [i.e., not to use ground forces, not to bomb below 20,000 feet, not to risk U.S. lives, not to permit collateral damage, not to bomb during Ramadan, etc.]."

Such pledges simplify planning for a foe, he wrote, just as artificial deadlines for American withdrawal allow an enemy to "simply wait us out."

The Rumsfeld guidelines both echo and refine military thinking set down in past years by Caspar Weinberger, President Reagan's defense secretary, and by Colin Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff for the first President Bush and secretary of state for the second.

For example, Rumsfeld wrote that American lives should be risked only when a clear national interest is at stake, when the mission is achievable, when all required resources are committed for the duration of combat -- and only after the nation's leadership has marshaled public support.

But the Rumsfeld guidelines can be read as diverging from eight years of Clinton administration policy. During those years, the armed forces were assigned a number of missions -- from Haiti to Somalia to Bosnia to Kosovo -- that critics, often Republicans, said risked American lives for humanitarian assistance, peacekeeping and democracy-building efforts that had less clear benefit for American national security.

An early draft of the memo was obtained over the summer, but under strict ground rules set by the person who provided the memo; it was meant for informational purposes only and could not be published. Repeated requests for Rumsfeld to discuss his thinking were made in the intervening months, and he agreed this weekend to provide the current version of his guidelines.

The two-page memorandum said that before committing military forces, the nation must consider how it might affect American interests around the world "if we prevail, if we fail, or if we decide not to act."

"Just as the risks of taking action must be carefully considered, so, too, the risk of inaction needs to be weighed," he wrote.